


blueberry night

by zauberer_sirin



Series: Confessions [4]
Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Daisy has OPINIONS about Pride and Prejudice, Dancing, Diners, Established Relationship, F/M, Kissing, POV Skye | Daisy Johnson, Relationship Issues, Romance, a serious talk about Grant Ward, sort of
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-19
Updated: 2016-09-19
Packaged: 2018-08-16 02:42:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,195
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8083462
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zauberer_sirin/pseuds/zauberer_sirin
Summary: Daisy and Coulson kill time as they wait for a contact.
(Written for the #ByeByeHiatus prompt thingie at johnsonandcoulson)





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [BrilliantlyHorrid](https://archiveofourown.org/users/BrilliantlyHorrid/gifts).



“This coffee is terrible,” she says, gesturing to the waitress for another cup.

Coulson thinks she doesn’t see him smile at that, but she does. She sees everything. Specially his smiles. Even grumpy and exhausted, she still has time for those.

They have been here for over two hours.

“I’m so bored,” she says, then realizes. “No offense.”

“None taken. I find these things pretty dull myself.”

He doesn’t look like it, though. Coulson is not the calmest person she knows, but tonight he seems annoyingly patient with the situation.

Of course he has the luxury of not coming directly from a mission where he had to face five armed assailants. Being the new Director’s favorite sword to wield is _so fun_ , but between the bruises and the hours on her feet Daisy feels like she doesn’t need to make excuses for her grumpiness.

“If at least I had my laptop…”

“Our contact said no laptops, no phones, no electronics of any kind,” Coulson reminds her.

“Pretty easily spooked, isn’t he?”

“Well, you would be.”

“Yeah…” she agrees, feeling gloomy.

Silence falls over them. The reason why they are here in not something to laugh about.

The kidnapping cases have only worsened in the last few days and Daisy suspects there's a creepy motive behind them. Groups like the Watchdogs only want to hurt Inhumans, and they are upfront about it. But whoever is responsible for the disappearances of Inhumans (all young, many of them underage, some torn from their families at gunpoint) Daisy has the theory they want to use these innocents for something. Experiments? As a private army? Worst case scenarios keep running in her mind and they are getting… well, worse.

She doesn’t blame their contact for his paranoia, he’s probably driving in circles around the meeting spot to make sure no one is following.

It’s just that it’s the middle of the night (another safety measure she knows, but) she is so tired.

“I’m so sleepy,” Daisy protests again.

Coulson points at the coffee in front of her.

“How come you’re still sleepy, you’ve drunk five of those?”

“I used to be a hacker, Phil,” she says. She likes throwing in the _Phil_ when she is teasing him, because she is still not that used to the name yet. “Coffee no longer wakes me up.”

She gives him a soft kick under the table.

“Do something to keep me awake.”

“Me?”

She nods, enjoying testing their growing familiarity even if it’s only inch by inch. Okay, no, that sounded… nevermind.

“To keep you awake, mmm?” Coulson says, suggestively, as he slides his foot against her ankle.

Daisy moves her leg again, chuckling.

“No, _not that_.”

She steals a quick look at Coulson to make sure she hasn’t hurt his feelings or anything. She’d understand if things were still fraught on that front, after last week, after the way she basically ravished him in the gym and then freaked out about it. She still owes him for that, and she didn’t mean to snoop but she catch Coulson browsing fancy restaurants in DC a couple of days ago, so he is still going with The Plan, obviously.

“We could play at making up life stories for the rest of the customers,” she suggests. “But there’s only those two truck drivers at the counter, and I’m afraid their life stories seem too grim. Pity, I bet you’re very good at that game.”

“I dabble,” Coulson says.

“I know how you can help me stay awake,” Daisy tells him, leaning over the table.

“How?” he asks, leaning as well, until their hands are pretty close together and Daisy has the feeling that he might even take her hand. Absurdly she feels herself blushing at the idea of PDA in the middle of a diner in the middle of a dirt road, until she remembers they are also in the middle of a mission.

“Tell me something about you,” she says.

Coulson half-smiles.

“Why? I’m boring.”

She doesn’t mean to but she winces.

He catches it immediately.

“What? What’s wrong?” he asks.

Daisy shakes her head, but she still wants to explain.

“Ward said that to me once.”

Coulson’s face darkens as soon as he hears the name.

“When did this-?”

“Before I found out who he really was. He said I didn’t want to be with him because he was boring. That wasn’t the problem.” She notices Coulson’s expression and how it has changed beyond just darkness. “I’m so sorry,” she says, touching his hand gingerly, for a moment, over the table. “We don’t have to talk about Ward if you don’t want. Ever.”

He shifts in his seat, looking uncomfortable for the first time in the whole night.

“No, it’s just - I didn’t think you wouldn’t want to…”

That was true for the longest time. But Daisy has never talked about Ward with anyone, except for that horrible interrogation Coulson subjected her to after Rosalind Price was murdered. And even then she had said the things that she knew would be useful to catch Ward.

It feels like now she can talk to Coulson about anything, and that’s new. But then she wasn’t the only one whose life Grant Ward has scarred permanently.

“It’s okay,” Coulson says. “He thought he was boring and that this was the reason-”

“That wasn’t the problem,” Daisy explains, feeling such a bitter taste in her mouth thinking how much energy and affection she wasted on her former SO, trying to make him see he was a better person than he thought. Turned out that wasn’t true. “Boring is fine with me. Ward was… closed off. And reluctant, like it bothered him whenever I made him feel… something. I hate that feeling.”

“What feeling?”

“The feeling that people find it a chore to care about me,” she says, looking down at her coffee.

“I se,” Coulson says quietly, encouraging her to go on if she wants to.”

“Like they’d rather not. It’s not romantic. By the way I’ve always hated that part in _Pride and Prejudice_ , when Darcy tells her he loves her against his will? That’s just awful, how can you say something like that to another human being?”

“A conversation about Jane Austen, that should wake us up,” Coulson comments.

It’s soft but a bit awkward, and Daisy realizes they are not used to talking about romantic stuff, that they were never used to talking about feelings, even before this all happened. It seems weirder, even weirder than dry humping in the SHIELD gym.

The waitress comes and defuses the tension. She tells them that at this hour the pies are half price, since they’d have to throw them away in the morning anyway. Daisy is not that hungry but she appreciates a bargain and agrees to order two slices to share. 

“What do you recommend?” Coulson asks the waitress, a woman around forty.

Her voice reminds Daisy of how he talked to the girl in the ice cream shop. Which reminds her of the way he kissed her under the rain that night which makes her ears feel hot in a very nice way all of the sudden.

“Cherry is a classic,” the waitress replies.

“I like classics,” Coulson says, grinning. It’s not flirting, exactly, he’s just being… Coulson.

“He really does,” Daisy agrees, wondering if the woman will catch the underlying familiarity. “I’m a bit more adventurous.”

“Blueberry pie for you then,” she tells Daisy.

Judging by Coulson’s verdict the pies are pretty okay, all things considered, though he is pretty partial to roadside cuisine for some reason (the same reason Daisy is partial to hotdog carts and Funyuns, she guesses, it has to do with life experience). They share the two slices between them, urging the other to try theirs and there’s no way the waitress hasn’t caught up by now, that they are a _they_. The idea makes Daisy both proud and nervous. She can’t think about others seeing someone like Coulson interested in someone like her as anything other than a victory but she is not naive, she knows her and Coulson, they don’t look exactly _right_ together.

“Okay,” Coulson says.

“Okay what?”

“If it will help you keep awake, I will tell you whatever you want to know about myself.”

She gives him a mischievous look, but she is not going to abuse the chance. He is very private, and just because they are sort of possibly dating she is not going to press him to give that up.

“I just want to know a thing,” she says. Coulson looks like he is bracing himself for something. “Why are you so nice to waitresses?”

“What?”

“I noticed you are really nice to waitresses. Not just them, flight attendants, clerks at shops, anyone in the service sector. But waitresses, that’s your thing. Not in a creepy way. You’re just nice.”

“Everyone should be nice to waitresses.”

“Yes, but you’re like extra nice. Why?”

He leans back in the booth and looks out of the window. It’s pitch black out.

“My mother was a waitress,” he tells Daisy, but looking at the window rather than at her.

“Ah.” She smiles. All Daisy knows about Coulson’s mother is that she died when he was at the Academy, though unlike with his father - whose death Daisy learned every detail of the same day she got her SHIELD badge - that’s pretty much all she knew about her. In retrospect it makes sense she was a waitress.

“And a nurse,” Coulson adds, turning his head. “And a secretary. And she worked at as a travel agent for a while. She used to cut up pictures of all these exotic places and tape them to her cupboard door. She helped people travelling to wonderful places she would never see.”

“She sounds lovely.”

She sounds sad, he thinks.

“She would have liked you,” Coulson says, sounding like he says it without thinking.

“Yeah, right,” Daisy snorts. Like she is such a great catch. Not that she has any experience but she’s pretty sure parents do not like her. “Me? With the weather jacket, the necklace, the eyeliner?”

“Well, at least my girlfriend would be wearing the eyeliner for a change.”

Daisy skips his casual use of the g-word because… wait, what?

She raises an eyebrow. “Oh?”

“I’ll tell you some day,” he promises.

That seems to be as much as Coulson wants to talk about his family tonight, and Daisy respects that. It’s more than he’s ever said, more than she expected him to share. It makes her happy, like a glimpse into an unknown part of the guy she loves. But isn’t it a bit selfish? Being here sipping hot coffee and listening to her boyfriend (he is that, right? somehow the word doesn’t seem right for Coulson, or like _not enough_ , or maybe it has to do with the fact that she can’t bring herself to call him by his first name in her head, like she hasn’t earned it yet) telling family stories, while an innocent young Inhuman could be targeted and in danger right this moment.

He looks at Daisy for a moment and then seems to come to some realization, because he gets up.

“Come with me a moment,” he asks.

Daisy gets up and walks with him towards the counter.

“Does that still work?” Coulson asks the waitress, gesturing towards an old jukebox in the corner. Daisy hadn’t even noticed it was there.

“Kind of,” the woman replies. “One of the speakers is busted, so the music plays a little low.”

“Well, it’s late, probably better this way,” Coulson says, already fishing for some change inside his pockets. “Do you mind?”

The waitress shrugs. “It’s your money,” she says, looking amused.

She is probably thinking Coulson is a weirdo.

Daisy can’t say she disagrees with that diagnosis.

She follows him to the jukebox and watches him as he browses through the songs.

“I should find something fitting,” he says, with a curious look of concentration as he scrutinizes the titles.

“Fitting for what?”

“For you.”

She looks away.

“Like, what? A secret message?”

“Not secret,” Coulson replies, punching a couple of numbers.

The music plays kind of low, it’s true, but the song is super famous, even though Daisy remembers it most from a creepy thriller starring Julia Roberts. She blushes when she realizes the title.

She blushes harder when Coulson offers his hand, here in front of everybody (okay, three people, and the truck drivers barely gave them a look when the Van Morrison tune started, before going back to their phone and sudoku respectively). She looks around.

“What are you doing?”

“Keeping you awake.”

Daisy laughs. Yes, dying of embarrassment will definitely keep her awake.

“You are a total dork, you know that?”

“Yes,” he says. “I got it from my mom.”

If she tilts her head a bit, like this, he is also kind of cute. She can’t really reject his offer.

Coulson grabs her hand with his right fingers, uses his prosthetic to hold her by the waist. They only joke-dance, adopting some vintage moves, she swears. It’s a funny dance, rather than a romantic dance, but she is still in Coulson’s arms after all is said and done. No mistaking it, she and Coulson are dancing.

“What is our contact comes in and sees us dancing? What will they think?”

“That we are very good at undercover,” Coulson reasons. He has answers for everything, it seems. “Posing as _a couple_. No one would suspect we’re SHIELD agents.”

“SHIELD agents don’t dance?” she asks.

She didn’t see him but she heard him dance with May in that mission in Miami years ago. She admits she was curious then, about how he looked while he danced. Maybe even a bit curious about what it would be like, dancing with him, and a bit jealous of May for going on that mission - at the time she chalked those thoughts up to the fact that Coulson wasn’t talking to her and she was missing him quite badly. But maybe it was something else entirely.

“They do dance. But for mission reasons.”

“So this is unusual.”

“Very unusual. We’re going _off book_.”

Daisy smiles, beginning to sway to the music. “Off book. I like that.” He probably knew she would.

It’s a short song. Which is just as well. They have made a fool of themselves long enough. Coulson seems unbothered by it, has no problem showing a goofy side tonight. 

After the song ends they go back to the booth and Coulson, to Daisy’s surprise, doesn’t sit in his side by rather joins her, sitting right next to her and slipping one arm casually around her shoulder. Another 1950s date, Daisy thinks. Well, they are upholding the No Sex tradition pretty well.

Coulson kisses her cheek.

“What’s that for?”

“Another way to keep awake,” he says. 

He’s all charm tonight. A bit silly but overall it’s working. Daisy wonders if he is like this with all the women he’s dated. An old, greedy, orphan-who-wants-to-be-special part of her wishes this is all for her, and he’s never acted this way with anyone else. But she knows that’s unfair and creepy and immediately regrets the thought.

She sighs and presses her face against his neck for a moment. They’ve spent so many hours together that his clothes smell of her shampoo. She kind of likes that.

“Do I ever make you feel that way?” he asks suddenly. He’s close and his voice sound _wrong_ so Daisy sits up and looks at him.

“What way?”

“Like it’s a chore for me to care about you?” He swallows.

“What? _No_.” She can’t believe Coulson might think she was comparing him to Ward. “I do know you didn’t exactly want… _this_.”

She gestures between them. 

“That you wanted to be there for me in other ways. But that never made me feel unworthy. I felt it was a _you_ thing, not a me thing.”

“It was definitely a me thing, you are…”

He trails off, clicking his tongue like he’s frustrated he can’t find the right words. They are not great at talking, she knows. She wishes she could do what she normally does with guys she wants to keep in her life, just throw herself at them and screw their brains out.

Coulson lifts his hand to her cheek and Daisy catches it, stopping him, shaking her head because it’s not necessary.

“You’ve never made me feel like that, okay?” she reassures him. It feels kind of weird, Coulson is normally the one doing that thing where he makes her feel better. He always says the right words. She hopes she is doing half as well. “It’s basically the opposite. You were the first person in my life who acted like you were happy you met me.”

She feels like she’s shared too much with that. Only fair since Coulson talked about his mom but… She looks away before she has to catch how he is looking at her right now (she can stand anything but pity from him; pity, that was always her biggest fear, from him and the rest of the team, and she always suspected they talked behind her back about how sorry they felt for her). She checks the time on the big clock over the counter (no electronics meant they couldn’t wear their fancy watches either) and tries to focus on the mission. It’s well past two in the morning.

“You think our guy’s going to come?”

“He’ll come, you’ll see,” Coulson tells her. He is a hopeless optimist, which suits Daisy perfectly.

“Yeah, you are right. It’s just that… we need to stop this.”

She looks down at the table and her hands are balled in fists, in tension. Her powers hum under her skin, mirroring her frustration.

“You can’t protect every Inhuman on the planet,” Coulson says. Then his expression lights up, small creases at the edge of his eyes. “But you will try to anyway. That’s the thing about you.”

Daisy has to kiss him for that, and she wonders how she went years hearing this kind of words from Coulson and not putting her tongue in his mouth. Sort of how she also wonders how Coulson was able to say this stuff and look at her like that and still it took him thinking she was dead before he did something about it.

“You taste of blueberries,” he tells her, as she pulls back and sees that he had his eyes half-closed.

“That’s good?”

Coulson nods. “Very good.”

He kisses her, licking the outline of her lips to taste it all.

Then he settles back on the booth, and Daisy settles against his chest, and they watch the road, waiting for their contact to appear.

The waitress comes back with a coffee refill and Daisy no longer cares about what she sees when she looks at her and Coulson.

She and Phil, they might not _look_ right together, but it feels right to her, and she has decided that’s all she is going to care about.


End file.
